On the same day as the assault on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese army attacked Hong Kong. Among the colony's garrison were regiments from Britain, Canada and India as well as men from the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps: 'The Volunteers'.The HKVDC deployed a fighting strength of 1,900 officers and men. Over the next 17 days, until the surrender on Christmas Day 1941, 'The Volunteers' saw action all over Hong Kong. This is the story of their battle.

"Hong Kong Volunteers in Battle", when originally published in 1953, was the first general account of the battle for Hong Kong in December 1941. It has served as a source for other books in the conflict and is particularly significant as it was written by a Company Commander who took part in the battle. This is the first edition to acknowledge the author, Evan Stewart, who commanded the Hong Kong Defence Volunteer Corps No.3 (Machine Gun) Company in the fighting and, although injured, continued to fight with distinction for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order.

There were just a handful of Danish people in Hong Kong when the Japanese attacked in December 1941, and they had to decide: would they fight? The Danish consul in Shanghai forbade them to swear allegiance to the British crown--required of the soldiers who joined the Hong Kong volunteer force--but they ignored him. They fought, and some of them died for the British King and for Hong Kong. The rest were confined in prisoner-of-war camps or shipped to work in coal mines in Japan. This is the story of those Danes and of their families in the British colony on the coast of China, told with heartbreaking detail from letters and interviews with the survivors. It is a story which transcends nationalities and eras, a story of heroism and tragedy, cruelty, and courage.

In this remarkable study of the Far Eastern War, Oliver Lindsay and John R Harris have provided the most thorough and searching enquiry into the debacle which led to over 12,000 British, Canadian, Indian and Chinese defenders surrendering Hong Kong on Christmas Day 1941. The authors have made use of a mass of unpublished material - part of it drawn from the original war diaries which have never before been in the public domain.Although it is over 60 years since Hong Kong was liberated from the Japanese, numerous important questions regarding the war in the East and occupation of the Colony from 1941 to 1945 have not been explored until now. To what extent, for example, were Churchill and the successive Chiefs of the Imperial General Staff responsible for abandoning this outpost, which could not be reinforced when attacked or defended adequately? Is it true that fine leadership prolonged the fighting, inflicting serious casualties on the highly experienced Japanese when they struck in 1941? How useful was Britain's spying organization in China, which led to catastrophic repercussions for the POWs and Internees? What form did the Japanese atrocities take upon the helpless captives?This detailed and authoritative account of the campaign will provide a particularly compelling read for those interested in the Second World War or the history of the Far East.

25 December 1941 is known to this day by the people of Hong Kong as ‘Black Christmas’. The battle for Hong Kong is a story that deserves to be better known.

Scouting in Hong Kong, 1910-2010: Citizenship training in colonial and Chinese contexts, originally issued in 2011 as a hardcover book when the Hong Kong youth movement celebrated its centenary, is republished with revisions in 2024 as a paperback and an ebook. The narratives and analyses developed here covered the "what, how, when and who" and the "why and so what" of the development of the Hong Kong Scout Movement from 1910 to 2010, using a large volume of primary sources. It tells the story of Hong Kong Scouting based the theme of citizenship training for youth and its defining categories, esp. that of race, class, gender, and age, both colonial and post'colonial. The book is also richly illustrated with interesting and instructive images, many of which came from the Hong Kong Scout Archives. The study, originally based on a Ph. D. dissertation, is not meant to be an institutional hagiography. Instead, it is a critical study aimed at both general readers and readers with more specific interests, and should enrich their understanding of the histories of Scouting, youth, citizenship education, the colonies, the British Empire, and decolonization, China and Hong Kong.

The first systematic study of the experience of the more than 30,000 Hong Kong men and women who served in the British armed forces from the Opium Wars to the end of the British rule, putting them in the context of Hong Kong history, the history of the British Empire, and the military history of the 19th and 20th centuries.